Tom Stoppard was born “Tomás Straüssler” in Zlin, Czechoslovakia in 1937 and moved to England with his family in 1946. Catapulted into the front ranks of modern playwrights overnight when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead opened in London in 1967, he has become recognized as a contemporary comic master.

With his characteristically brilliant wordplay and extraordinary scope, Tom Stoppard has in Hapgood devised a play that “spins an end-of-the-Cold-War tale of intrigue and betrayal, interspersed with explanations of the quixotic behavior of the electron and the puzzling properties of light” (New York Times). It falls to Hapgood, an extraordinary British intelligence officer, to try to unravel the mystery of who is passing along top-secret scientific discoveries to the Soviets, but as she does so, the web of personal and professional betrayals―doubles and triples and possibly quadruples―continues to multiply.

Praise for Hapgood:

“Intricate, absorbing . . . Fascinating . . . As with the best of le Carré, Hapgood delivers a satisfying two-fer. You can revel in the trappings, tradecraft, turnabouts, and general hugger-mugger of the traditional spy thriller . . . But you also get to immerse yourself in the big-picture Stoppardian play of ideas.”—Boston Globe

“Merciful, witty, glancingly cerebral espionage drama . . . [Stoppard] has the ability to demonstrate intelligence as well as to display it. Hapgood fascinates and draws you in without ever turning you off . . . The breathless story engages the mind and emotions . . . The characters are written and performed with great feeling and common sense.”—New York Times

“Complex, erudite—the product of what has to be the most capacious and intricate mind devoted to the dramatist’s craft these days.”—Los Angeles Times

“[Stoppard] has been called cerebral, but his mind is a cogitating heart; it lusts for ideas . . . Written during the endgame of the cold war, the play is a theatrical cyclotron into which Stoppard tosses his colliding human atoms . . . On the surface the play is a le Carré-like thriller . . . [Stoppard is] a marvelous entertainer . . . [A] metaphysical fun house.”—Newsweek

“Few playwrights entertain as many ideas and make so many ideas entertaining as Tom Stoppard . . . [Hapgood] is hugely entertaining and often quite moving.”—Variety